Another ally falls on Spy City Season 1 Episode 5, “Dark Imaginings.” Severine’s death is shocking, mainly because it feels like it comes too soon in this meandering story.

However, this is the penultimate episode; maybe it only feels too soon because it’s placed almost immediately after Greer’s demise.

Severine’s grim end feels like yet another outlet for which the show wants to explore Scott’s man pain through, but it never quite does. After Greer’s death, he merely goes further undercover; and after Severine’s death, he gets much more active than he has been in the past.

SPY CITY Season 1 Episode 5 — Romane Portail as Severine Bloch – Spy City _ Season 1, Episode 5 – Photo Credit: AMC+

If these deaths were meant to depress Scott into inaction and brooding, they do quite the opposite: he is now spurred forward on three counts. That is, to find Severine’s mysterious murderer, Udo Hoff; stop the Soviet enclosure of Berlin on August 13^th, and to find the envelope.

Severine’s place on the show was always an insecure one — was she an ally? Was she in love with Scott or was she just using him? It’ll be interesting to see if her story ends here or continues past her death with the rest of the French, who seem none too friendly to Scott.

Udo Hoff’s reveal in this episode should be intriguing. However, it mainly seems that the Stasi man twisting Eliza’s finger into spying for him was the only major character left, which is Hoff. That Severine doesn’t even get to triumph over him — leaving it to Scott — seems like a missed opportunity.

Hoff’s death can’t come soon enough, especially after he creeps on Eliza in an effort to coerce her. Sexual violence hasn’t come up yet on Spy City, but here it is, all of a sudden. It does convince Reinhart to finally give up and move to London with Eliza if they can both get out.

Reinhart comes across as even more foolish than he was in previous episodes; yes, he wants to protest his government’s unfair treatment of everyone. That’s a good motivation, but when you can’t even recognize that your girlfriend has been spying to save you?

That’s just dumb, especially in twisty-turny Berlin, where nothing is as it seems, and where they’re about to begin building the Berlin Wall. Yes, something really did happen in Berlin on August 13, 1961: the construction of the Wall, which wouldn’t come down until over 20 years later.

Since it’s a known fact that this is going to happen, it would seem Spy City is building towards an anti-climax. Perhaps, this means that it was supposed to be an intimate character drama with spycraft as its background.

But can you be a character drama when most of your characters are dead?

Spy City Season 1 Episode 5, “Dark Imaginings,” is a good episode that would’ve fit right in on a better show. As it stands, it feels horribly out of place. But there are beautiful moments, like Eliza and Reinhart reconciling, or Severine’s death on a massive football field.

Severine’s death is the event on this episode, and it comes up in the middle, which points back to the pacing problem that this show has experienced from the start. In any other show, a character as important as Severine would have died at the end or the beginning.

This show wants to be different, but it’s clear it isn’t sure just how to be, yet. As we’re coming up on the sixth and final episode, it’ll be difficult for it to get back on track. If it ever was on track.

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Spy City airs Thursdays on AMC+.

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